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Friday, Mar. 27, 2026

Did voting precincts around Arizona State University’s Tempe campus shift to favor Republicans since 2016?

Mia Osmonbekov, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
yes

Across the precincts that cluster around Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, the Republican share of the two-party presidential vote shifted by roughly 5 percentage points from 2016 to 2024, according to an AZCIR analysis of election data. 

That shift came as Republican voter registration in Maricopa County, which includes Tempe, increased by nearly 150,000, or about 20%, over that same period. More registered Republicans didn’t translate into a bigger share of the vote. The party’s portion of ballots cast stayed roughly the same at 35%. 

The same pattern played out statewide. Republican voter registration grew by about 19% from 2016 to 2024, yet its voting share slipped slightly. At the same time, Democratic voter registration grew by 15%, with its voting share slipping more noticeably from 34% to 32%. 

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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